Have you ever wanted to know more about Virtual Machine (VM) backups but didn’t know where to start? Whether you have questions around backing up a VM, restoring application data or understanding the ins and outs of a disaster recovery plan; this guide will help you get started. From on-premises, in the cloud or hybrid… find out the best way to protect your VMware VMs and meet your SLAs across your environment. We’ll discuss the considerations for a successful backup and recovery, including some tips and tricks for a better virtual machine backup.
Here’s a preview of what our VMware Backup for Dummies guide will cover:
The basics
In this guide, you’ll review the basics of how virtual machines, hypervisors and applications function together. Since virtualization is a foundational technology behind the modern datacenter, grasping these key concepts is vital for reliable VM backup.
What is virtualization?
Virtualization is the process of creating a software-based version of something. There are many parts of IT infrastructure that can be virtualized, such as desktops, networks, storage, data, applications, CPUs, cloud and more. When it comes to backup, this guide will focus on server virtualization.
With server virtualization, the resources of a host physical server are virtualized, pooled and distributed among virtual computers, also known as virtual machines, or VMs. The host server runs a piece of software called a hypervisor (such as ESXi in VMware vSphere) which manages the distribution of the host server’s resources to the VMs. These VMs can then run independently, running different operating systems and applications.
The practice of virtualization drives more efficient use of existing physical resources thus lowering capital costs and operating expenses, as well as providing flexibility within your IT environment. Some of the most common use cases for VMs include workload consolidation, the need for scalable, rapid provisioning, as well as business continuity and disaster recovery. Datacenter virtualization is huge, and those workloads need to be protected.
Snapshots & image-level backup
It’s important to remember the foundational element of server virtualization ― that all the VMs currently residing on one host are sharing the physical server’s resources, as well as being managed by a single hypervisor. What happens if all these VMs start their backup jobs at the same time? It’s possible this could overwhelm the hypervisor, as well as the host server’s resources causing latency, or worse, backup failure.
This is where the power of snapshots can be valuable. A snapshot captures a point in time copy of the VM, which is a much quicker process as compared to a full backup. Snapshots by themselves are not backups, but they are an important piece of image-based backups. The main reason why a VM snapshot is not equivalent to a backup is because they can’t be stored independent of the VM. Because of this, depending on how often you take snapshots your VM storage volume can grow rapidly, and thus impact performance. For this reason, it’s important to be cognizant of the quantity of snapshots you are taking.
Download the guide for more
The basics of virtualization and VM backup is only the beginning of this guide. Backup is key, but it’s all-for-nothing if you can’t recover when and where you need it most. This guide will detail different recovery methods for your VMware workloads, from a full instant VM recovery to item-level recovery. Ensure you are confident in your recovery plan and learn how to improve your recovery time objectives (RTOs), recovery point objectives (RPOs) in order to meet your SLAs. You’ll also read more about leveraging VMware backup in a hybrid cloud environment, and how it can enhance your data protection, security and disaster recovery strategy. All this and more tips, tricks and best practices are at your fingertips.
Dive in to discover the best recovery methods and data protection solutions to ensure business continuity. Whether you need an introduction or a quick refresher, this VMware Backup for Dummies guide is a great add to your data protection library.
Additional resources:
- Download a 30-day FREE trial – #1 VM Backup for VMware
- Watch a recorded webinar about VM backup strategies
- Need more than VM Backup? Learn about even more Veeam tools for any app, data or cloud
